I Hope I Can Outlive Internet Explorer 6
What is so great about Internet Explorer 6? I can’t really see anything. It was released in 2001, it doesn’t offer PNG support, and it has buggy CSS rendering. For some reason many have not upgraded to Internet Explorer 7. I recall when IE7 was first released there was a fair amount of pushback from some IT departments. Some major software companies like Oracle did not recommend the upgrade to IE7 at first. While this is not unusual, it has been a couple of years since the release of IE7 and in my experience it is easier to use and more secure than Internet Explorer 6.
Internet Explorer 6 also known at IE6 has been a nightmare for developers since it’s release. An interesting statistic, 23% of my visitors last month still used IE6. A shocking number considering this is a website geared at web and technology professionals. I think they staying power of IE6 is due to a couple of factors. The first is corporate IT departments resistant to change. The other is the tendency for Windows users to disable their automatic updates. In dealing with our customers, I have discovered many average users don’t even realize their browser was released when Taylor Swift was jumping rope on the playground and the Jonas Brothers were getting their first training bras. Many of these users had no idea there was a better, more secure, easier to navigate browser available to them for free.
Many web development companies have stopped supporting Internet Explorer 6. As much as I would love to discontinue support I don’t believe this is yet a reasonable step. Partial support using strategies like progressive enhancement is an option, although, not always acceptable by the customer. I am really hoping with the release of IE8 that many of those corporate IT departments will begin to upgrade. When the need to support Internet Explorer 6 disappears, web developers will be able to create better, more stable web applications with considerably less effort. If not now, I just hope that it happens sometime in my life.
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Comments
There are developers that actually charge extra for making their site IE6 compatible. If the client thinks that is a necessary function, then they should pay for the extra work that it takes to make that happen. This would be an easy decision for sites redesigns where they have been collecting web stats. From that information they could see the typical number of IE6 users and may find that they really don’t want to pay extra to support a very small number of users.
The simple answer is that there’s nothing great about IE6.
I, too, hope for a swift death to the festering boil known as IE6, but unless Microsoft does more to educate users, it’s unlikely to happen. Considering the many (still existing) security holes that IE6 has, IE7 should have been a priority update. However I continue to see IE6 in widespread use.
My own blog receives very few IE6 users (just shy of 2%), perhaps because if you visit my site with IE6, you get told to upgrade to IE7 (or better yet, Firefox). To a degree, this might be what it takes. If Microsoft is unwilling to clean up their own mess, web developers may have to revolt and start to reject IE6 outright.
With IE8 about to release, now is definitely the time to get a plan in place.